Fourteen billion years ago a tiny speck of energy at an incredibly high temperature started to expand. Time and space were born. There was no before and no elsewhere. The Universe came into being. Small particles formed from the energy and eventually combined to produce planets, stars and galaxies. On our planet, Earth, life developed, from the same building blocks, and evolved into ever increasingly complex forms. Eventually a species developed with sufficient intellect to understand the past back to the start of everything, and with sufficient knowledge to affect the future. It is an incredible story, the father of all stories. To describe the story in detail would require all the books of the libraries of the world and more. Every book, whether physics or philosophy, biology or biography, tells part of the story. The purpose of this book is quite different: it is to present the briefest possible account of the story that will satisfy most people's curiosity. The presentation is in the form of thumbnail diagrams in order to provide an easy read. The arrangement, rather than being a list of sequential chapters, is a branching structure of themes. It is thus a book to dip into and move forward or back, rather than one to read from beginning to end. For some the information will be adequate, for others there will be encouragement to delve into further detail. Many readers will be reminded of things once known, now half forgotten, and students may find useful revision notes.